


Mama Can You Die From A Broken Heart?

by Katybug1992



Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, M/M, oscar is a jerk, underlying sprace but not really sprace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-14 22:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21023276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katybug1992/pseuds/Katybug1992
Summary: Tony suffers his first real heartbreak and needs to go home for a few days.





	Mama Can You Die From A Broken Heart?

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired and Based off the song "Mama Can You Die From A Broken Heart?" by Maddie and Tae.

Medda called out a take five as she looked at the caller ID, seeing her youngest son’s name. Tony never would have called during rehearsal time unless it was important, and for him to deem it important enough to call then it had to be bad. Tony never asked for help, never wanted to. He was different from his brothers, Jack and Charlie, who wore their heart on their sleeves. Tony played his cards close to his chest. He didn’t even tell anyone that he was applying to Yale until his acceptance letter came. And he was always the callee, never the caller. Medda tried to check in with him, at least, twice a week as he was her kid that lived furthest from her. Jack and Charlie still lived at home, she saw them everyday. She had to wait months to see Tony.

“Hey, baby,” Medda answered the phone with a smile, “this is a pleasant surprise. Everything okay?”

“Hey mama,” Tony replied, his voice sounding a little shaky, “how do you get a red wine stain out of your favorite shirt?”

“Sweetie?” Medda’s expression scrunched up in confusion, “Are you okay?”

“I’ve had a head-ache for a couple of days,” Tony replied, “Can I come home for a few days? I’m ahead in my classes, so that won’t be an issue.”

“Of course, baby,” Medda replied immediately, “When are you thinking?”

“This weekend or next. Depending on when I can get a train ticket.”

“I’ll buy it, love, don’t worry about it.” Medda replied.

“Can you get for a Thursday departure?”

“Whatever you need, love.”

“How do you get a red wine stain out of your favorite shirt?”

Medda knew there was more, but she knew when to push and when not to push. She would have him under roof and her watchful gaze in a couple of days. She would press him then if he didn’t come clean before then.

Medda looked up as Tony walked into the apartment. Her eyes followed him as he walked down the hall into his room, closing the door, obviously not seeing her. She didn’t see much of him, but she knew there was something very wrong.

“Hey, baby,” she greeted, voice soft as she entered his room, “you want to talk about it?”

Tony looked up at her from his bed, eyes already shining with his tears, “How does he sleep at night? Mama, the nerve of this guy. He just left me like it was nothing. I feel like I’m dying.”

Medda didn’t know what to say at first, so she sat down next to Tony and let him cry on her shoulder. She knew what she said to Jack and Charlie after their first heartbreaks, but Tony was different. She had not met this boy yet, Tony was going to be bringing Oscar home with him for the first few days of Winter Break, but she knew that Jack and Charlie had met him and they did not like him, told her he was bad news. But she had responded that Tony would need to figure that out on his own, that his brothers telling him not to see someone would make Tony double-down. It’s one of the reasons he and Sean were so close, because Jack hated him.

But as she held her baby, trying to calm him down and get him to remember to breathe, she wished she had met the boy earlier, so that she had a good description for the hitman. She shook off the thought, knowing she was overreacting, but she had never seen Tony like this after a break-up. All she could do was hold him as he cried it out.

After another ten minutes, Tony pulled back, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose, “Thank you for the train ticket. Maintenance is finally getting around fixing the door to my room and I couldn’t be there to deal with the judgmental looks. It got slammed the other night. Our Suite door was fine so it wasn’t urgent. Anyway, it hasn’t closed right since, something with the hinges.”

“That’s good.” Medda nodded, knowing that she was missing something.

“Oscar and I had a fight, a bad one.” Tony disclosed.

“What about?”

“He thinks that I’m cheating on him with Sean. He wouldn’t believe me and it escalated quickly. Insults were thrown, mostly by him because I was thrown completely off-guard. The only way I knew how to handle it was to yell back at him. He looked like he was going to hit me before his stormed out. Please don’t tell Jack, he knows the combination to the gun safe.”

“Oh, honey.” Medda’s concerned gaze focused solely on Tony, who seemed like he was trying to sink in on himself.

“Mama, please don’t say I’m gonna laugh about this someday,” Tony pleaded, echoing the words Medda had said to Jack and Charlie after their first heartbreaks, which were much more different, much less severe, than the one Tony was going through, “You didn’t see the way he walked away.”

“You stay as long as you need to,” Medda replied, “train tickets can be changed. Do you need anything?”

“I just need to be left alone.” Tony replied.

Medda nodded and stood up, closing the door behind her.

Tony pulled his blankets over his head, burying himself under the duvet, after checking him phone and seeing nothing from Oscar. That’s all he had heard since the fight, radio silence. How could Oscar just go on living his live like it was nothing. Tony opened himself up to him, there were, like, two people outside of his family that Tony did that for. Trust didn’t come easy. It took a lot for Tony to fall for someone, and he fell hard for Oscar. He seemed so sweet when they met. He was a couple years older, but Tony had waved off his brothers’ concerns. Waved off Charlie’s bad vibes comments, waved off Jack’s overreaction to the age difference and general overprotectiveness, waved off his own concerns that Oscar didn’t feel as strongly for him as he did for the older boy.

But then that night happened. They had been in Tony’s room, the door to his bedroom closed and his suitemates all at a party one of the Fraternities was throwing. Tony had been talking about his essay for his class on Tudor history (a fascinating argument that Anne Boleyn had the most impressive legacy of Henry VIII’s wives - commulating in her daugher, Queen Elizabeth I), when he was cut off by Oscar kissing him. He smiled into the kiss and kissed him back. But then Oscar started getting pushy, and wouldn’t back off until Tony tore himself out of the kiss and managed to get to the other side of the room. Things escalated from there until Oscar stormed out, after raising his hand and seeing Tony flinch.

As the days dragged by without so much a text from Oscar, Tony fell more and more into his head and into his depressed state, barely dragging himself out of bed for class and increasingly grateful that he was ahead so he didn’t have to worry about his homework. He turned in everything for the few days he was going to be home, telling his professors that it was for a family emergency. And from the state he had been in in the days leading up, there was no reason not to believe him. He felt like he was dying. Was it ever really real if Oscar didn’t feel like he felt?

Medda could keep Jack and Charlie away from him for a day and a half, the older boys finding reasons to walk past the dark room. Tony had not emerged from his room since he got there. Whenever she checked on him the lights were off and he was fully under his covers, and she could hear him crying. Her heart clenched knowing that she couldn’t do anything to help him. Jack and Charlie only lasted twenty minutes, Jack’s temper getting the better of him (the longer he spent trying to comfort his little brother, the more he wanted to kill Oscar) and Charlie’s empathy getting the better of him (Medda caught him wiping his eyes as he left the room, heart breaking seeing his little brother so broken).

Medda was at a loss for what to do and what unbelievably relieved when Sean Conlon walked through the door, Jack trailing behind him, cursing Jack for not getting him sooner. Jack’s snarky response was cut off by Sean shutting Tony’s door in his face.

“Tony,” Sean prompted gently, willing his eyes to adjust to the dark of the room quickly.

“Over here.” Tony’s voice was muffled by the duvet.

Sean sighed and slipped off his shoes, effortlessly making his way across the dark room and sliding under the duvet, turning to face his best friend, wrapping his arms around the blond as Tony said, “I feel so stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.” Sean replied, pressing a kiss to Tony’s head, “You’re the smartest person I know.”

“I let myself fall for him,” Tony choked out, “After only knowing him for a couple of days, I let myself fall for him.”

“You’re not stupid, just human.”

“I feel like I’m dying, like my heart’s been torn out of my chest.”

“I know.” Sean replied, voice rough with emotion, “I know it hurts right now. I know that you’re feeling so much pain right now and blaming yourself. But it’s not your fault. And, I know you won’t believe me right now, but this will pass. With time. You’ll end things officially, because he treated you like crap and you deserve so much better, and then you’ll move on. It’ll still hurt but it will lessen as time goes by and eventually, he’ll be a distant memory and you’ll be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“What do I do until then?”

“Embrace it. Use it to help yourself grow.”

“Sean?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t leave me.”

“Not even a thousand armies could tear me away from you.”

Monday rolled around and Tony emerged, looking better (not back to normal, but better than when he got there), and walked over to where Medda stood making breakfast.

“How are you feeling?” she asked as Tony effortlessly began helping her cook, always her sous chef.

“Better.” Tony replied, “I still feel like I’m dying, but it’s not as bad.”

“It will pass,” Medda replied, “it’s all part of growing up. If there was a way for me to protect you from this pain, I would.”

“I know, mama.” Tony smiled over at her, the sight instantly making Medda feel better about him going back to New Haven that day.

“You want me to go with you to Grand Central?” 

“I’ll be fine,” Tony shook his head, “besides, you have your show to get ready for. I’ll be home in again in a month and a half.”

“Much to far away.” Medda smiled.

“It’ll fly by.”

“It won’t, but you’re sweet for thinking that saying that would help.”

They finished breakfast as Jack and Charlie entered and the family ate together for the first time since the night before they took Tony to Yale. Jack and Tony bickering over Jack’s taste in TV shows, Charlie trying to mediate the conversation while talking to Tony about how school was going, Medda watching with a fond smile.

Eventually it was time for Tony to head to Grand Central Station. He hugged his brothers good-bye, managing to convince Jack that he didn’t need an escort, before he turned to Medda.

“Thank you for letting me come home.” Race muttered, hugging her tightly.

“Never thank me for that.” Medda chided, “You are always welcome here, whether you just miss me or you need to escape. I will never turn you away.”

“I love you, Mama.” 

“I love you, too, baby.”

Medda watched as he walked over the apartment, heading over to the window to watch him as he walked down the street until he disappeared down the stairs to the subway.

“He’ll be okay.” Jack stepped up next to her.

“I know he will.” Medda smiled, “He’s stronger than we think he is, stronger than he thinks he is.”


End file.
